


Carnivale

by fresne



Category: Twelfth Night - Shakespeare
Genre: Cosplay, F/M, Genderbending, Podfic, Podfic & Podficced Works, Podfic Available, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-19
Updated: 2011-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-27 13:10:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/296201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fresne/pseuds/fresne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the time of Carnivale, the good men and women of Illyria were wont to put on masks and take on the costume of other fates. The Duke and Duchess of Illyria were wanton in this custom more than most.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Random_Nexus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Random_Nexus/gifts).



> The following inspiration for this work and inspiration for my dialogue, where I am not directly quoting, because apt quotes are cool:  
> Twelfth Night

On the first morning of Carnivale, as was their custom, Viola and Orsino broke their morning fast in the oak lined parlor overlooking the sea. Bright clouds raced over the green waves, which were white chopped and much disturbed by the touch of the wind.

Viola felt very much like those waves and would very much have liked to have paced the red carpet. Instead she kept still to her seat as a Duchess should. She looked at her wedded lord from beneath her lashes. He teased at a worn thread in his lush robes. She smiled slightly to see his mood so reflect her own.

The wind of the room changed when a servant entered with a tray. As was their custom, it was covered in some eighty pale cakes topped in glittering sugar. Viola's breath caught in her throat like a bird that beat itself against a window. Her eyes met those of her wedded lord. They both reached out as of a single motion and took up a cake.

The servant took the tray and left them to themselves.

Viola bit down delicately. She licked her lips clean of sugar. Her careful nibble met with only cake. She swallowed moist, which seemed in that moment dry as a castaway on an unknown shore. She took another bite and found what she was looking for, a small metal object baked into the cake. She rolled it with her tongue inside of her mouth. She tumbled it this way and she tumbled it that way as she separated the cake from the metal and swallowed the cake on down. As she looked at Orsino, Viola saw him likewise work carefully at something inside of his mouth.

Viola pushed the thing with her tongue out through her parted lips and into her waiting hand. She held it there a long moment of anticipation and took a look at her fate. It was a figure of a young bravo with his points all untied and his clothes in a disarray; a sack of wine in his hand and his purse heavy at his waist. She swallowed and held it out to Orsino that he might see. She looked down at what he held in his hand and felt her breath catch once more, a dozen birds now. His figure was that of a cortigiana with her bodice open that she might better display her wares. The figure was so well wrought that Viola could see the woman's tongue lick at her lips. Viola licked her lips and set her figure upon the table. Orsino did the same.

Viola stole his figure, which she tumbled through her fingers. At his raised eyebrows, she leaned over for no chaste kiss, which she broke with the words, “I think, my Lord, that I will procure a room at the Elephant.”

He breathed in and she gave him a saucy wave over her shoulder. She headed to her rooms to set her ladies to work.

That night, at the ball to open Carnivale in Illyria, the guests clapped to see their Duchess as a cortigiana in a rouged mask. The cheered their Duke as her young bravo with a light mustached mask.

Valentine dressed as Harlequin raised his glass in toast, “Huzzah, Your Graces.” Sir Toby Belch, also dressed as Harlequin, met this toast double handed. He had, perhaps, started early.

“Well met friends. Merry Carnivale.” Orsino raised a glass in celebration, but he only drank water. He watched Viola through the holes in his painted mask as she went about the figures of a Brawl. She watched him through the holes in her curved mask as he swung the Countess Olivia high in the steps of a Volte for all that she wore the wide dress of La Signora.

Often, they did not look at each other all. They did not dance together.

But when the bell tower struck ten, they slipped away from these lesser revels. They raced down the back way stairs. Anticipation made their steps light as they made their way to the Elephant where the tap room was already five deep.

Viola cocked an eyebrow that Orsino could not see. When he went to pay, she said, "I arranged for the room in all its details." Orsino's hand grew unsteady enough to spill a coin on the floor. Viola caught it up. With a look at Orsino, she placed it between her breasts for safekeeping.

Up the creaking stairs then to the procured room where a Dutch oven warmed from the wall. For a moment, Viola did no more than let out all those gusty breaths that she had held. She laughed and set aside her mask. They set to undo her dress and with Orsino’s help, she slipped from it. The coin slipped to the floor, but was not forgotten. They undid her layers until she stood in naught but her chemise and shivered. With the room so warm, she shivered not with cold. They set to Orsino undress until he stood likewise in naught but his shirt.

They traded shirt for chemise solemn as Lent.

She wrapped the corset about him and began the business of tightening it. Her index finger darted into the opening along his spine and along the fold of flesh that she was making from the corset’s embrace. Each time it was a little caress through the thin lawn of the chemise accompanied by a jerk of the cord and tightened him still further.

“Bend over.” Her voice felt already low and rough as if she’d shouted her pleasures all these hours. He braced himself on the white washed wall and stood at an angle. “More.” She slid her feet along his and tugged at his hips until he was to her liking. She tightened the corset until he was Spanish slender. All his breathing came high up in his chest as it could no longer move out.

Orsino stepped into Viola’s abandoned farthingale, which Viola buckled about his waist with sharp clicks. Viola dropped a petticoat over the farthingdale, as solicitous as any maid. She fastened the dress with its embroidered skirts and false wooden pearls. A cortigiana’s dress cut away here and there to show what might be purchased for a night. Viola put the fallen coin in Orsino’s bodice and smiled as a wolf might smile. "There now, my bond for the night." Orsino slipped on the wig of yellow silk and put on the mask with the painted rouge. Viola painted his lips that they might match the rest. Kissed him to smudge those lips as they should be done with her own. She tied on a stiff pointed collar that framed his face in thread of gold as a halo might do. If angels were inclined to rouge.

Orsino dressed Viola with quick fingers. She could have done it herself, but she shivered to his tugs and touches. He tied the stiff pointed ruff and hid her throat from view.

Orsino was broader in the shoulders, but Viola more than made up for this by the concealment of her chest under the padded doublet. His hands slid up and down her legs until they were encased in tight hose and tied with bright ribbons at the knee. He fastened her codpiece and slipped in some better stuffing. He buckled her sword belt, a swinging pressure on her knee.

She put on the cloak herself, which was a flip over her shoulder. She brushed the fingers of a gauntlet under his chin before she put them on. He adjusted her cap with the red feather so that it brushed her cheek if she moved just so. She slipped on black leather boots with raised red heels. He put on slippers that peeked and flashed red from under his skirts.

They climbed down the creaking stairs. Viola faster now. Orsino walked slower and more carefully. As they came to the street, Viola spun on a booted foot and bowed to the street. She bowed to Osino. She stepped lightly around him in the figures of a dance or the forms of a fencing circle. It was all the same. She spun around him.

He took small steps. If he stepped too quick, the farthingdale would ring him like bell. Instead he stopped. "You bounce about like a tick on a dog."

Viola bowed with an elaborate wave of her cap. “And like a tick I wish only to couch upon your skin and taste of what lies under." She took his hand in hers. "Your beauty shines even in this dark dull street." She kissed his index finger at the knuckle. Slipped her tongue quick between his index and ring. She whispered into his hand, "I’d sue for greater dominion of these lands.” She let go of his hand and bumped his arm with an elbow as a callow youth would. “I’ll have you know I’m quite the hardened campaigner.”

“But, my lord.” His lashes flickered behind the mask. “I’m an open port. You have but to pay my fee to sail your light barge up my channel.”

Viola flicked a finger along his masked cheek and took up Orsino’s arm. Viola swaggered cock a hoop. Orsino took his small constrained steps and breathed up and out as they pushed their way through the crowded narrow streets.

They found themselves at the tavern of the Spotted Ram where Viola scattered coins to pay for a drink for every man and woman in the place. The crowd in their merry mood roared.

As she did so, Orsino yelled, “You’d best save some of that round coin for me, my lord, or my ring may remain caught in my glove.”

Masked strangers, close enough to hear the cortigiana’s words, clapped Viola’s back. “You’ve a merry one there. Best step back and let a more experienced fencer take up with her to thrust merry ways from her dewlap lips with their swords.”

Viola shook her head and made the feather tremble. “I may be only a country boy and know only country matters, but O, the times I’ve been a popp’rin pear at a ladies request will stand me now in good stead.” Viola smacked her lips and they all laughed some more. A happy crowd on the first night of Carnivale and ready to make of it what they could.

They drank deeply there. All the world felt as if it tumbled on Viola’s breath. No, on Orsino’s breath as his chest expanded in no direction but up and down. Viola brushed gloved fingers where his flesh was covered in naught but light lawn at the edge of his bodice.

Orsino tapped her masked cheek with a fan and yelled over the noise of the crowd, “Much more of that and the fields will be plowed and the horse put back to the barn before the night grows older yet.”

A woman with a wild red silk wig and matching mask, her red dress already half open to the hands of the man in whose lap she sat, called out, “All the better, sister. Quick custom leads to widely ploughed fields. We flowers fair best when visited by more than one bee.”

Viola shook her head; the feather in her cap fingered her cheek. “O’ fair flowers, you prick me with your thorns. When,” she gave Orsino’s hand a tug, “All I ask is you give me a chance to prick in fair exchange.”

The woman leaned back to give the man’s long nosed mask a deeper dive. "Fair trade, sister."

Orsino followed Viola out the door and into the small street to the side of the tavern. The close built houses leaned over them as if to hide them from the sky. For all that it stank of garbage and all unsavory, Viola leaned against the wall. She said, “Graze on my lips, flower.” He kissed her under the shadow of the balcony with the raucous street a few feet away. She said when they parted lips, “If those hills be dry, stray lower,” she quirked her head, “where the pleasant fountain lies.” Viola worked at the ties on her codpiece

Orsino sank to the ground. He could not bend from the waist in that corset. Still, he plucked out what he had placed in her codpiece and gave suckle as if he were the Northern wind sucking at clouds. While his red rouged lips wrapped around wood and not flesh, his fingers strayed higher yet to tangle between her legs. Viola’s own fingers slid under his wig and into his hair. They tugged at each other. Until laughing, they went to another tavern and tried some variation on their theme.

In the wee hours of morning, with light a thought in the sky, they stumbled back to the Elephant where their room waited. Orsino reached to untie his ruff when Viola said, “What, my lady. Do seek to cheat me? The night is not yet over and I have yet to lay claim to the docking at port for which I have fully paid.”

Orsino sat down with a heavy creak on the edge of the bed. Viola climbed into his lap until he fell onto his back. She pushed up his skirts and flipped back the willow farthingdale rings to press against his bodice. She explored his feet and legs and found as she made her way that he could be quite a good steed to ride. She let free her already loose ties and rode him well with both cantering and galloping paces until they both were drenched with the effort.

She came to a smooth dismount, but she was not done with him.

As his corset held tight his gasps, she reached to the table by the bed where a jar of bear grease waited. He would have squirmed, but she held him down with her thighs. She prepared him in the rearward fashion with finger and stroke and greased that which he had already sucked earlier that evening. She thrust and twisted with her wrist even as she held her other hand against his chest.

She whispered, “Say my name.”

He groaned and she thrust all the harder, until he called out, "Cesario!" For which she kissed the name off of him and swallowed it into herself.

Finally, beyond spent, they gathered themselves up.

It look much longer to change back. There were many stops as Orsino nuzzled her neck and Viola’s hands lingered long over Orsino’s corset.

Eventually though, they made their way back to the palace.

There they changed into morning robes and as was their custom, they went to the parlor overlooking the sea. Dark clouds raced over the darker water. A servant brought in a tray with hot tea and a plate of some seventy-eight small brown cakes.

Viola sipped her tea and watched Orsino look at her over the rim of his own cup. When neither of them could wait another moment more, they took a cake into their hands and mouths. She carefully bit in until she found her prize to tumble from her mouth with a flick of her tongue.

She held up her figure. “My lord, I have the priest.”

Orsino held up his figure. “While I, my dear Father, have the bishop.”

They set the figures on the table and leaned together for a kiss of lazily dipped tongues into cake sweetened mouths. On the table, the little metal Bishop stood all a stern with his crosier held as one may hold a crop. The priest knelt on his knees with his eyes raised as in prayer and his mouth open as in song.

Orsino whispered into the curve of her ear, “Confess,” and made address to her lips again.

She pulled away. Her lashes fluttered down as a fan for her cheek. “Your Excellency, I am an open book.” She slipped from her chair to lie down in the window couch where it overlooked the sea. She blinked at him slowly and held out a hand.

He whispered, as he looked down at her, “A book well worth the reading.” He joined her on the couch overlooking the changeable waves. They slept curled together under a coverlet of down and silk while below the water crashed on the shore and the sun made its hazy way across the winter sky.

Later, as she stretched out in the ruins of an abandoned grey chapel sweating at the abandoned labor of her sins, Viola reflected on the figures to come and adjusted her position that she might better receive the rearward piercing wisdom of her bishop. She cried out, “Christ’s mercy!” and abandoned herself some more.


	2. Carnivale [Podcast]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the time of Carnivale, the good men and women of Illyria were  
> wont to put on masks and take on the costume of other fates. The Duke and  
> Duchess of Illyria were wanton in this custom more than most.

Format: MP3, 19:59, 9.4 Mb  
Music Credit: "O Fortuna", Renaissance in Provence.  
Recorded for Amplification 2012

[podcast](http://fresne.podbean.com/mf/play/zca2eu/Carnivale.mp3)

[archived here](http://audiofic.jinjurly.com/carnivale)

**Author's Note:**

> If after reading my fiction here, you would like to read more about me and my writing check out my profile.


End file.
